Newbie Needs Advice!! Points/Ebay purchase Questions

[amcginny]

Hello friends! I have been considering ownership for sometime now. My husband and I were sucked into a Wyndham preview package of some sort. We paid around $3k for 400,000 points to be used in 2 years. We had an awesome honeymoon in Oahu at the Wyndham Waikiki beach walk!! We ended up throwing away about 100,000 points but I don't regret the purchase - it was a learning experience for sure! Some of the Ebay deals seem too good to be true so here is where I need your advice:

• Thinking of buying 105,000 annual points at Wyndham Nashville. Maintenance fees are about $74/mo. Is there a conversion to using points at other Wyndham resorts?
• I am seeing some "Club Wyndham" listings - is that the same as regular Wyndham points?
• Are my points automatically rolled over from year to year? That was the sales pitch when we were at the meeting but not sure if that was a new feature or if that has always been the deal.

If you have purchased through a secondary source and have any advice, I am all ears!! Thank you!

 

[Railman83]

High fees go for something 6/1000 or lower. That would be $250 less a year for life.

If you want a free one I have a Flagstaff 105 for $68 per month.

 

[Jan M.]

The Nashville resort has high maintenance fees so I wouldn't recommend owning at this resort. Another thing to consider is that if you don't own at least 231,000 annual points you will be paying the minimum $131 program fee instead of .58 per thousand points.

I think you mean Club Wyndham Access, CWA, points which is a contract for the annual use of a specific number of points vs being deeded at a resort and having Club Wyndham Select, CWS, points. The CWA points have higher maintenance fees than I like but we own a lot of points so that becomes more important to me than if we owned fewer points.

Yes you can move your points forward to one of the next two years but would have to do that fairly early in your use year and there is a charge to do this. $39 I believe. If you elected to deposit your points in a future use year you would be able to borrow from the next year's points for reservations made within 90 days of check in. If you end up with points left at the end of your use year you can deposit them into RCI.

You will get a free RCI weeks account with any Wyndham ownership. You will have access to RCI last call weeks and extra vacations. You don't use any points for them just pay the required price.

 

[harveyhaddixfan]

Here’s a grid I put together. The first set of columns figures 4.50/1000 on MF plus the min program fee of $131 or .56 if 231k or higher. This is monthly and yearly. Second set is every other year at 4.50 also, but has the program fee doubled. The 3rd set is 5.00/1000 and last set is 5.50/1000. I was told 4.50/1000 was a “good deal”, hence the baseline.

 

[Braindead]

Hello friends! I have been considering ownership for sometime now. My husband and I were sucked into a Wyndham preview package of some sort. We paid around $3k for 400,000 points to be used in 2 years. We had an awesome honeymoon in Oahu at the Wyndham Waikiki beach walk!! We ended up throwing away about 100,000 points but I don't regret the purchase - it was a learning experience for sure! Some of the Ebay deals seem too good to be true so here is where I need your advice:

• Thinking of buying 105,000 annual points at Wyndham Nashville. Maintenance fees are about $74/mo. Is there a conversion to using points at other Wyndham resorts?
• I am seeing some "Club Wyndham" listings - is that the same as regular Wyndham points?
• Are my points automatically rolled over from year to year? That was the sales pitch when we were at the meeting but not sure if that was a new feature or if that has always been the deal.

If you have purchased through a secondary source and have any advice, I am all ears!! Thank you!

I would buy Waikiki Beach Walk for lower MFs over Nashville with high MFs.
You had a great time there and the MFs are on the low side and should stay on the low end with no grounds to maintain.
I don’t think Nashville is a high demand resort that you need ARP at.
The only reason not to buy at a low MF resort is ARP.
Where is the destination you will visit most often? That way we can help if you need ARP at a particular resort.
I would also recommend a CWA contract over Nashville if your going with higher MFs with ARP at a lot of the resorts.

 

[ronparise]

Wyndham, Club Wyndham, And Club Wyndham plus are pretty much used interchangeably to refer to the timeshare system developed and managed by the company formerly called Wyndham Worldwide and properly called “Club Wyndham Plus” To confuse things more there is a club within the club called Club Wyndham Access

Further confusion is possible now with the new company that used to be part of Wyndham Worldwide, called Wyndham Destinations

Most of the eBay sellers and even most owners have no idea what they are talking about when they refer to their timeshares by one name or another

 

[amcginny]

I would buy Waikiki Beach Walk for lower MFs over Nashville with high MFs.
You had a great time there and the MFs are on the low side and should stay on the low end with no grounds to maintain.
I don’t think Nashville is a high demand resort that you need ARP at.
The only reason not to buy at a low MF resort is ARP.
Where is the destination you will visit most often? That way we can help if you need ARP at a particular resort.
I would also recommend a CWA contract over Nashville if your going with higher MFs with ARP at a lot of the resorts.

I have been looking out for Waikiki Beach Walk to pop up on ebay but they don't show up too often. That would be the ideal location! I thought the Nashville "deal" was a good one IF we could easily use our points at other locations. Has anyone been to Bonnet Creek? I see that all the time on ebay and also lots of mentions on this site. What is the attraction to this resort?

 

[kaljor]

Has anyone been to Bonnet Creek? I see that all the time on ebay and also lots of mentions on this site. What is the attraction to this resort?

It's really close to Disney World (I believe it's actually on Disney property) , it's really nice and it's really big, meaning easier availability.
You may be missing the bigger point though. If the location really doesn't matter to you because the points can be used anywhere starting 10 months before you want to check in, you should be concerned more with the Maintenance Fee rather than the location.

 

[Braindead]

I thought the Nashville "deal" was a good one IF we could easily use our points at other locations.

You can easily use your points at other locations at 10 months. It’s free to use your points at your home resort or any Wyndham Plus Resort as long as you have RTs left.

I don’t think the Nashville is a good deal because of high MFs.
Waikiki Beach Walk come and go on eBay. You might see 2 or 3 close together then you might go a couple of months before you see another one pop up.

 

[skotrla]

Here’s a grid I put together. The first set of columns figures 4.50/1000 on MF plus the min program fee of $131 or .56 if 231k or higher. This is monthly and yearly. Second set is every other year at 4.50 also, but has the program fee doubled. The 3rd set is 5.00/1000 and last set is 5.50/1000. I was told 4.50/1000 was a “good deal”, hence the baseline.

Nice chart.

Generally speaking, people greatly underestimate what the true cost of ARP is.

If you own 500K points @ $4.50/1K and 500K points @ $6.50/1K to get ARP at various resorts, you can look at this in 2 ways:

1000K points @ $5.50

1000K points @ $4.50 plus a $1000/year fixed fee for ARP

I would contend that the second one is closer to reality, since you pay the $1000 whether you use the points for ARP or not. I would guess there are many people that could get rid of their ARP points and just fork out money for a rental if they don't use all of the ARP points every single year.

-Scott

 

[amcginny]

It's really close to Disney World (I believe it's actually on Disney property) , it's really nice and it's really big, meaning easier availability.
You may be missing the bigger point though. If the location really doesn't matter to you because the points can be used anywhere starting 10 months before you want to check in, you should be concerned more with the Maintenance Fee rather than the location.

I understand I can use my points anywhere, I was just curious why this location seems to be so popular. Currently there are 2 or 3 listings on ebay and I see them pretty consistently so I thought I would ask. I thought the MFs on Nashville were pretty low (ie - affordable) but I am learning that there are better options out there.

 

[harveyhaddixfan]

I understand I can use my points anywhere, I was just curious why this location seems to be so popular. Currently there are 2 or 3 listings on ebay and I see them pretty consistently so I thought I would ask. I thought the MFs on Nashville were pretty low (ie - affordable) but I am learning that there are better options out there.

Popular because of Disney. I’m in the process of closing on a Bali Hai 168k EOY contract that will cost me about $35 a month. It would be about $60 if it was every year. I had read that this is basically the cheapest place you could buy, MF wise. It’s $3.54/1000.

 

[Braindead]

I understand I can use my points anywhere, I was just curious why this location seems to be so popular. Currently there are 2 or 3 listings on ebay and I see them pretty consistently so I thought I would ask. I thought the MFs on Nashville were pretty low (ie - affordable) but I am learning that there are better options out there.

Bonnet Creek is a very large resort. Because of it’s size you have more owners there as well. So naturally you will see more resale contracts at the larger resorts verses the smaller resorts. Another example Grand Desert is another large resort that you will see more resale contracts available on eBay and Grand Desert has low MFs. I would recommend Grand Desrt over Nashville as well.

 

[ronparise]

I understand I can use my points anywhere, I was just curious why this location seems to be so popular. Currently there are 2 or 3 listings on ebay and I see them pretty consistently so I thought I would ask. I thought the MFs on Nashville were pretty low (ie - affordable) but I am learning that there are better options out there.

That there are a lot of Bonnet Creek contracts for sale on eBay has nothing to do with the popularity of the resort. There are a lot of these on eBay because more Bonnet Creek contracts exist than any other. It is a 100% UDI Resort (all points) and it’s the largest of all the Wyndham resorts. It just stands to reason that there are more for sale

Bonnet Creek contracts have always sold well and often for more per point than a lot of other resorts. One reason is that mf is a little less than average and another reason is that there are several weeks (Christmas and Easter are two) when you need arp to get a reservation for the larger units but in my opinion that dosent explain everything. The fact is that some people just don’t understand that points from one resort are no different than points from other resort, 10 months ahead of check in. They just like owning Bonnet Creek